The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, recently also rebranded as VU University Amsterdam, is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880, and consistently ranks among the top 150 universities in the world by major ranking tables. The VU is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being the University of Amsterdam (UvA). The literal translation of the Dutch name Vrije Universiteit is "Free University". "Free" refers to independence of the university from both the State and the Dutch Reformed Church. Both within and outside the university, the institution is commonly referred to as "the VU". Although founded as a private institution, the VU has received government funding on a parity basis with public universities since 1970. The university is located on a compact urban campus in the southern Buitenveldert neighbourhood of Amsterdam and adjacent to the modern Zuidas business district.
The Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica is a research center in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and is located at the Amsterdam Science Park. This institute is famous as the creation site of the programming language Python. It was a founding member of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM).
The University of Amsterdam is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). Established in 1632 by municipal authorities and later renamed for the city of Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam is the third-oldest university in the Netherlands. It is one of the largest research universities in Europe with 31,186 students, 4,794 staff, 1,340 PhD students and an annual budget of €600 million. It is the largest university in the Netherlands by enrollment. The main campus is located in central Amsterdam, with a few faculties located in adjacent boroughs. The university is organised into seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Science, Law, Medicine, Dentistry.
André Kuipers is a Dutch physician and ESA astronaut. He became the second Dutch citizen, third Dutch-born and fifth Dutch-speaking astronaut upon launch of Soyuz TMA-4 on 19 April 2004. Kuipers returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-3 11 days later.
Robertus Henricus "Robbert" Dijkgraaf FRSE is a Dutch theoretical physicist and string theorist. He is the director and Leon Levy professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and a tenured professor at the University of Amsterdam.
Prof. dr. Joseph Johannus (Jos) Engelen, a Dutch physicist, was Chairman of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) from January 2009 to October 2016.
VU University Medical Center Amsterdam is the university hospital affiliated with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. It is rated as one of the best academic medical centers in the country in terms of patient care and research. It is located next to Amsterdam's A10 ringway in the southwestern part of the city, next to the campus of the Vrije Universiteit and close to Schiphol airport.
Ronald Hans Anton Plasterk is a Dutch scientist and a retired politician of the Labour Party (PvdA). Being a former Minister of the Dutch government, currently he works as the CSO for the globally active healthcare company myTomorrows and is an appointed professor at the medical faculty of the University of Amsterdam.
Amsterdam University College (AUC) is a public liberal arts college in the Netherlands with an enrolment of about 900 students from more than 60 countries. All teaching is in English.
Anne de Graaf is an American-born Dutch academic, diversity advocate and is the author of over 80 books, with 5 million sold worldwide. She has won the International Historical Fiction Christy Award in 2000 for Out of the Red Shadow, the final book of her Hidden Harvest series, and the East European Christian Children's Book Award in 2007 for Dance Upon the Sea. Anne de Graaf currently teaches Human Rights and Human Security; and Peace Lab at Amsterdam University College and serves as the Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Amsterdam.
SEO Amsterdam Economics ('SEO) is a scientific institute for economic research commissioned by ministries or businesses.
Nikhef is the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics that performs research in particle physics and astroparticle physics. Amongst others, it is a research partner of the CERN institute in Switzerland, and is a collaboration between Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Radboud University, University of Groningen, Maastricht University and Utrecht University. The current director is Stan Bentvelsen. Nikhef is located at the Amsterdam Science Park in Watergraafsmeer in the Netherlands.
Corina Brussaard is a leading scientist for Antarctic viral ecology working for the Royal Institute of Sea Research (NIOZ) and is a Special Professor of Viral Ecology at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics of the University of Amsterdam (UvA).
Eric-Jan Wagenmakers is a Dutch mathematical psychologist. He is a professor at the Methodology Unit in the Department of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Since 2012, he has also been Professor of Neurocognitive Modeling: Interdisciplinary Integration at UvA's Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences. A noted expert on research methods in psychology, he has been highly critical of some dubious practices by his fellow psychologists, including Daryl Bem's research purporting to find support for the parapsychological concept of psi, and the tendency for psychologists in general to favor the publication of studies with surprising, eye-catching results. He has also been active addressing the replication crisis in psychology, including by helping to conduct a series of studies aimed at reproducing a 1988 study on the supposed effects of smiling on the perceived funniness of cartoons.
Max Welling is a Dutch computer scientist in machine learning at the University of Amsterdam. In August 2017, the university spin-off, “Scyfer BV”, co-founded by Welling was acquired by Qualcomm and he has since then served as a VP Technologies at Qualcomm Netherlands.
Peter Jan Margry is a Dutch historian and European ethnologist who works at the University of Amsterdam and, since 1993, also at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences research center Meertens Institute in the Netherlands. Previously, he worked in The Hague and Den Bosch where he held positions as archivist-researcher, historian and archival inspector successively at the Dutch National Archives, the Court of Audit (Netherlands) and the Province of North Brabant. During the 1990s he was also active as a consultant on document heritage, working in Suriname and Papua (Indonesia).
Peter Rudolf Wyder is a Swiss physicist. He was a professor of experimental solid-state physics at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands from 1967 until 1988 and in 1990. Wyder later served as director of the High Field Magnet Laboratory in Grenoble, France.
The Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics (KdVI) is the institute for mathematical research at the University of Amsterdam. The KdVI is located in Amsterdam at the Amsterdam Science Park.
Rens Bod is a professor in digital humanities and history of humanities at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the exploration of patterns and underlying principles in language, music, art, literature and history. He also investigates the history of pattern searching in the humanities from a supranational perspective, thereby giving an impulse to the new field of "history of the humanities".
The Descartes-Huygens Prize is an yearly scientific prize created in 1995 by the French and the Dutch governments, and attributed to two scientists of international level, a French one chosen by the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen and a Dutch one chosen by the Académie des sciences, to reward their work and their contributions to the French-Dutch cooperation.
